What's Dawning For Morning News?

April 12, 2002|By Hal Boedeker, Sentinel Television Critic

After Bryant Gumbel departs CBS' The Early Show, the No. 3-rated morning news program won't scuttle its familiar format, which ranges from Mideast reports to fashion shows, war updates to Survivor interviews. Executive producer Steve Friedman is adamant: He won't reinvent the wheel.

"It's a ticket to disaster," he says. "Any time someone has tried to break the norm, it's been a colossal failure."

Friedman scoffs at industry observers who urge CBS to go another route: "Anybody suggesting that doesn't understand the reality of what people like."

Millions like the standard model: genial anchors, a gregarious weatherman and a steady mix of news and entertainment. Morning news has come a long way since Today's inception on NBC 50 years ago: Big-money anchors, huge ad revenues and bragging rights all shape a contest that grows increasingly heated as every year passes.

Everyone, it seems, has a favorite anchor team: Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on top-rated Today, Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson on No. 2 Good Morning America on ABC, or Gumbel and Jane Clayson on the far-behind Early Show.

The anchors have made major headlines recently -- Gumbel is leaving the CBS show after 2 1/2 years, Couric signed a $60 million deal at NBC -- but equally important is how Sept. 11 shook the programs and could guide their futures. After responding with some of their best journalism, the shows have found easing back into familiar grooves to be challenging.

"It's always a balancing act of what's the right mix for any given day," says executive producer Jonathan Wald of Today. "That's what we struggled with after 9/11. We were criticized for not getting back to our staples soon enough."

Good Morning America won wide praise for news coverage after the terrorist attacks. Executive producer Shelley Ross wants to maintain the approach but with modifications.

"We're not any less serious if we do three extra features and two are lighthearted," Ross says. "It is all part of the mix. We ask deep philosophical questions every day. We're serious but we're funny. It's by design. We ourselves feel a need for psychological breaks."

While covering the Mideast crisis and the funeral of Britain's queen mother this week, GMA also restaged "TV's Funniest Moments," such as the group hug/farewell on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

"I'm a strong believer in life is going on for the rest of us," Ross says. "The key is to be respectful. Give people the news. But I don't think you necessarily have to send them out of the house with a heavy heart."

CBS' Friedman says the programs became more serious after Sept. 11, and he's struggling with the balance.

"In the past, we didn't care about appropriateness," he says. "In the past you could do Colin Powell at 7:05 and a rock singer at 7:40 in the same show. Now you give more consideration to the mood of the day or week."

The programs' efforts after Sept. 11 were examined by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an affiliate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. "In the first days following the attack, the network morning shows provided some of the most serious reporting around," the project said in a January study.

Project director Tom Rosenstiel says the programs contributed "more genuine journalism" and are in a transition that will be interesting to watch. All three telecasts have offered extensive reports on the Mideast.

"Will the more serious programs gain because American tastes have changed, because the world has become more dangerous?" he asks. "Or will froth and infomercialism return? Will we return to a pre-9/11 commercial triviality?"

It's been evident in the past two weeks that fluff remains part of the mix: The Early Show offered Celine Dion singing, GMA redid the candy factory scene from I Love Lucy, and Couric donned a pink boa and lounged on a red couch to interview the author of Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts.

The programs all defend their wide-ranging approach by pointing to print counterparts.

"We're like any morning newspaper," says Ross of GMA. "You read your international section, you turn to the sports section, you can flip back."

The circulation this season stands at 6.2 million for Today, down 2 percent from last year; 4.7 million for GMA, up 9 percent; and 2.7 million for The Early Show, up 6 percent.

They far outpace similar programs on cable: In March, Fox News' Fox and Friends attracted 737,000 viewers, and CNN's American Morning had 485,000.

"Morning TV has become more important because of the changing news cycle and world news," Ross says. "With 24-hour cable news, you can tune in and find out any time what the headlines are. Most Americans go to bed and wake up and want to know if the world is safe. You have to have a great newscast and appealing anchors."